


Dead Irish Poets

by themysteryvanishing



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Cancer Arc, F/F, Flashbacks, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 23:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14779229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themysteryvanishing/pseuds/themysteryvanishing
Summary: For Typey.





	Dead Irish Poets

**Author's Note:**

> For Typey.

_Five Years Ago_

_Myka stared through the darkness at the sideways outline of the large wooden bookshelf across the floor of her new room. She’d spent the evening arranging her personal library upon the shelves. Tiny universes blinked back at her. She realized how many of them she had not yet explored._

_It stung, much like the realization that she hadn’t said everything she’d wanted to in life, hadn’t uttered the confessions she spent years silently conveying to darkened ceilings in all the different rooms she had slept in over the years._

_This new job in South Dakota felt like a sentence. So…final. She pushed passed it, blinked in the mostly-darkness, as her new bookshelf blinkered behind strange shapes that only her wearied retinas could form, with colors only subconsciousness could describe. That was, if only she could get to sleep._

_She considered projecting her thoughts onto the ceiling again, in that self-narrative voice she wanted to call her own. But she’d done so once already that night; no use in wearing out her welcome. This room was her home away from home now, wasn’t it?_

_She sighed._

 

 

_Eighteen Years Ago_

 

 _“_ So _…what does Yeats_ mean _by that?” Warren Bering asked again, his exasperation underlined with anger now. It had been three hours._

_Myka’s eyes were well-rimmed with tears. She swept away reddish-black eraser shavings for the fifth time and sniffled as quietly as she could._

_“Look at me,” her father said, from across a short expanse of the kitchen table._

_Myka blinked hard and finally looked up._

_“Say the lines again.”_

_Myka did not have to check the book. The words were all there, floating just a few inches to the left of her father’s shoulder. Better than above his head, she reasoned, like the Lewis Carroll quote, because that had looked like she was eye-rolling him. And the consequence of eyerolling was no dessert for the weekend, excluding holidays. The words eventually stopped showing up so high, but Myka almost didn’t miss the sugar anymore._

_“For certain minutes at the least, that crafty demon and that loud beast, that plague me day and night, ran out of my sight. Though I had long perned in the gyre, between my hatred and desire, I saw my freedom won, and all laugh in the sun,” Myka recited._

_Warren Bering’s expression was a shade impatient._

_“…Which means,” Myka continued. “…he…”_

_Her father rolled his wrist expectantly._

_“…wasn’t bothered by either the demon or the beast.  The first four lines mean something like, ‘For the first time, he wasn’t bothered by the imperfection of his body or the danger of his spirit.’ Either the man in the poem died and he was separated from these things or he somehow found this…meditation-like state where he can control his thoughts and feelings. The next part of the stanza says ‘perned in the gyre.’ Maybe the man was somewhere between life and death and finally, by dying, he’s free, ‘a freedom won’ between hatred and desire that…clouded his life.”_

_Myka waited._

_Mr. Bering was staring off into the distance. Then, “Finally. A man ahead of his time, Yeats was. Brilliant.”_

_Myka chanced a quick glance at the clock. She wished he would hurry up. It didn’t matter how much homework she was given at school; Warren Bering would fit in his own lesson, every school night, without fail. Myka briefly wondered if, by adding an extracurricular when she became a freshman next year, he’d give fewer of these literary seminars. The neon-colored flyer advertising next year’s fencing class, tacked up on a board outside the gym, had caught her eye…_

_“Get your mess cleaned up,” her father said abruptly._

_Myka flinched but smoothed the motion into hurriedly gathering her books off the table. Apparently the Yeats poem had been dissected to Warren Bering’s satisfaction. “When you’re done, set the table and tell your sister to get cleaned up for dinner.”_

_Myka went to her room, arms laden with the week’s reading assignments, and rearranged them on her desk. Yeats was sorted into Wednesday’s yellow folder._

_She approached her bookshelf and withdrew a sheet of notebook paper from one of the books. Her finger trailed the immaculate cursive, the most comprehensive list of her personal library to date._

_Yeats, William B. The Collected Poems. Check._

_She smiled at her books. Her universes. “I’ll read all of you someday. I promise,” she whispered as she tucked the list back into the book jacket of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. She turned off the light and returned to the kitchen at a run._

 

 

Present Day

 

And now, Myka stared at the tiny row of books lined up on the bedside table, her makeshift bookshelf, which basked in golden light of the afternoon sun.

She smiled.

Some of the titles were familiar to her; some, refreshingly new. She wanted to reach for one of those tiny, blinking universes, but god, she was so tired. If reaching for a book was this exhausting, she knew reading it would no doubt end in tragedy. She sighed and dangled a pale arm, linked with tubing to a nearby IV pole, over the side of the hospital bed.

“Here, allow me.”

The solid contact of a book against Myka’s limp hand shocked her. Her eyes found the title and her ears found the voice.

“Helena,” she croaked.

“I do hope you like Irish poets,” Helena said, indicating the book. She resumed reading in her spot beside the bed.

Myka slowly withdrew her arm and dragged her gaze across the tattered cover. _Yeats_. She said nothing for a moment, did not smile or frown or expend energy for any other emotional display.

Helena heard the silence and looked at her, expression effortlessly gentle. Encouraging, almost.

“Y’know…actually,” Myka croaked again and cleared her throat. “I’m tired of Yeats.”

Helena raised her eyebrows. “Don’t I know it. A young Mr. Auden said the same thing to me, though I’m certain it was for reasons vastly different from my own. At least _I_ came to terms with the rampant symbolism e _ventually_.”

Myka could’ve sworn the faintest of smiles quirked the woman’s lips.

Her companion returned the book to the makeshift shelf and Myka’s self-narrative voice supplied, rather dryly, _Good for you, kid_.

Helena pulled out another book and offered a wry smile. “ _Wuthering Heights_? I’ll even read it aloud to you. How does that sound?”

Myka smiled. “I…would _love_ that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
